Andrea Ghez

Professor Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los
Angeles dates her initial interest in astronomy back to the first moon
landings. Though she imagined herself pursuing a variety of careers when she
was a girl (including becoming a ballet dancer), she always enjoyed science,
which seemed to her like "a game or puzzle". "I liked the
process of solving things," Ghez explains. Ghez believes that her
parents' high expectations for her, and their faith that she would succeed,
played an important role in shaping her ambitions; from a very young age, she
assumed that she would earn a Ph.D.. Her mother provided an excellent role
model of a successful working woman. She was also influenced by a great
chemistry teacher, who was the only female science teacher she had throughout
her education. She earned her bachelor's in Physics from MIT in 1987, and
her doctoral degree from California Institute of Technology in 1992, and is
the recipient of numerous honors and awards including a Sloan Fellowship, the
National Science Foundation's Young Investigator award, and teaching awards
from Caltech and UCLA.

Ghez has two principal areas of research. First, she studies how stars
form and under what conditions they do or do not form planets. This will help
determine how many other planets like ours exist in the universe. Second, she
is trying to prove that there is a super-massive black hole at the center of
our Galaxy. If proven, this "tantalizing theory" which has been
debated for years will potentially help us to understand how our Galaxy and
other galaxies formed and what conditions might effect the evolution of their
central regions. To address these issues and others, Ghez works at a variety
of different telescopes observing sources primarily at infrared wavelengths.
Ghez relishes the freedom to define what problems she works on, and the
opportunity to travel to interesting places like Hawaii to use their
telescopes. In the beginning, Ghez confronted a certain amount of prejudice
as a woman working in a male dominated field, but she has found that once her
male colleagues know her "as a person" and know her work, "this
tends not to be a problem." Her advice to young people interested in
this field is to take as many math and physics courses as possible. She
encourages those who are interested to pursue a career in astronomy because
"this field is a lot of fun," and emphasizes world-travel as one of
the prime benefits. In addition to science, Ghez is passionate about
swimming, which she does with a master's swim team: "I do it to keep my
head screwed on straight and to meet people who don't think about science all
day long. It keeps things in my life balanced."